“We are a bit like in an open-air prison”, has fun this Chinese professor who wishes to remain anonymous, confined since Thursday, November 25 with 60,000 people on the huge campus of Zhejiang University. “I give cinema lessons twice a week here, tells this young professor contacted by La Croix, and Thursday at the end of the course, we learned that we could not go home. ” The students all receive a message on their phone. A positive case was detected in an art department. And everyone must confine themselves to the campus, the largest in wealthy Zhejiang province, located northwest of the capital Hangzhou.
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“It’s a bit like DysneyLand Shanghai where 30,000 people were confined a few weeks ago, but here it lasts a little longer. I stood in line for three hours yesterday for a saliva test and the test was negative, just like everyone else on campus. But we’re going to have to do a test again this Friday evening, wait for the results on Saturday and we may be able to go home. “
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In the meantime, life is organized in this small town, “A large village” for this Chinese teacher. “I found a very good friend who had studied in Europe with me and who is the director of the tea studies department… I’ve been tasting all the best teas in China for two days. But we also have French wine… ”
“It’s a bit chaotic”
As the canteens in each department cannot accommodate everyone, each one orders meals and is delivered: “They leave the bags at the entrance to the campus, the guard receives them, puts them on the ground, and everyone comes to pick them up, it’s a bit chaotic but it works very well. ” From his friend’s desk, where he slept on a chair, he has a bird’s eye view of the university entrance gate: “There are the police, the health services and dozens of parents who come to drop off quilts, blankets, soap, etc. for their children, but also for everyone else, people are mobilizing. “ He received a quilt and toothpaste.
The infected person was returning from a weekend in Shanghai when she tested positive. “The health services have recovered all the journeys of the person in Shanghai and Hangzhou”, tells our teacher, and everyone she met saw their QR Code go from green to red, forced to get tested and stay at home. “This is what we have been experiencing in China for months with the virus. The least case is traced, the contact cases identified, tested and confined. “ He laughs, aware that the protocol is binding in the eyes of Europeans, but “It is like that in China”.
“On campus, no one revolts, he bursts out laughing with his friend. We cannot revolt, we have no choice. It’s a bit of a funny and spectacular situation. My girlfriend has a 2-year-old daughter and can only communicate with her by video phone … We are fatalistic, we wait for news from the university administration, without being able to do anything else. I hope we don’t spend the whole weekend there. “ This is China at the time of the coronavirus.
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